Re: [patch 01/12] clockevents: Prevent timer interrupt starvation

Thomas Weißschuh
2026-04-08T12:41:22Z

Hi Thomas,

On Tue, Apr 07, 2026 at 10:54:17AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> From: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@kernel.org>
>
> Calvin reported an odd NMI watchdog lockup which claims that the CPU locked
> up in user space. He provided a reproducer, which sets up a timerfd based
> timer and then rearms it in a loop with an absolute expiry time of 1ns.
>
> As the expiry time is in the past, the timer ends up as the first expiring
> timer in the per CPU hrtimer base and the clockevent device is programmed
> with the minimum delta value. If the machine is fast enough, this ends up
> in a endless loop of programming the delta value to the minimum value
> defined by the clock event device, before the timer interrupt can fire,
> which starves the interrupt and consequently triggers the lockup detector
> because the hrtimer callback of the lockup mechanism is never invoked.
>
> As a first step to prevent this, avoid reprogramming the clock event device
> when:
> - a forced minimum delta event is pending
> - the new expiry delta is less then or equal to the minimum delta

with this patch now in the tip tree my QEMU/virtme-ng based machine
fails to boot. The startup seems to freeze in:
start_kernel() -> rest_init() -> schedule_preempt_disabled() -> schedule()

CONFIG_GENERIC_CLOCKEVENTS=y
CONFIG_GENERIC_CLOCKEVENTS_BROADCAST=y
CONFIG_GENERIC_CLOCKEVENTS_BROADCAST_IDLE=y
CONFIG_GENERIC_CLOCKEVENTS_MIN_ADJUST=y
CONFIG_HZ=1000

CPU: i5-1135G7
clock event device: lapic-deadline

The clockevent device is still reprogrammed each millisecond,
presumably for the tick.

(...)

Thomas